The MedStar Georgetown University Hospital / MedStar Washington Hospital Center Rheumatology Fellowship Program is an ACGME-approved, two-year program with an option for further research training. Its primary goal is to train physicians to be highly skilled consultants in rheumatology with demonstrated competencies in patient care, medical knowledge, professionalism, practice-based learning and systems-based practice. The program's emphasis on clinical experience, didactics and research prepares fellows for their choice of career: clinical practitioner, clinician educator or researcher.

The program offers fellows every benefit of training at a renowned acute care, teaching and research hospital. There is a shared schedule of conferences with MedStar Georgetown, adding a broader base to the teaching faculty; the Hospital Center serves a diverse patient population presenting a wide range of usual and unusual cases; and the faculty provides expertise not only as clinicians, but also as researchers.

MedStar Washington Hospital Center's Division of Rheumatology, a division of the Department of Medicine, is an active and challenging place to learn and work. Its two general arthritis clinics, lupus clinic, and joint injection clinic along with the practices of full-time faculty log more than 3,500 outpatient visits per year. On the inpatient service, the division provides approximately 500 consultations yearly and four to five inpatients are on service daily. The rheumatology service admits four to five patients monthly directly to their own service, generally with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and other connective tissue disorders, or with systemic vasculitis.

In addition to SLE and rheumatoid arthritis (RA), patients present with a host of other rheumatic disorders including all the connective tissue diseases; spondyloarthropathies; osteoarthritis of axial and appendicular joints; crystal disease; infectious arthritis, including acute and chronic Lyme disease; bone disorders; vasculitis; regional musculoskeletal conditions; osteoporosis and pain syndromes. We also follow patients with systemic conditions such as sarcoidosis, and autoimmune pulmonary and liver disease. Patients receiving care in the hospital's dialysis and transplant programs are referred to the division for rheumatic complications (e.g., gout, infections) and post kidney transplant care. In the intensive care units, we see acutely ill patients with SLE, systemic vasculitis, TTP and CAPS.